Yale Psychiatry Grand Rounds: June 25, 2021

June 30, 2021

Information

Toksoz Byram Karasu, MD, Academic Leadership Lecture: "Giving Voice to Values: The 'How' of Values Driven Leadership"

Mary C. Gentile, PhD, Creator/Director, Giving Voice to Values Professor of Practice, University of Virginia-Darden School of Business

ID6766

To CiteDCA Citation Guide

00:00So catch the introduction so hi
00:04everybody, my name is
00:05John Crystal and chair of
00:07the Department of Psychiatry
00:09and I'm very pleased
00:11to welcome you to the inaugural T Byram
00:14Karasu Academic Leadership Lecture,
00:16which will be an annual lecture that
00:18has been established through the
00:20generosity and support of one of our
00:23department's most distinguished alumni.
00:25Doctor T Byram. Karasu,
00:27who is distinguished professor emeritus.
00:30Who is excuse me?
00:32Distinguished professor emeritus
00:33Dorothean Marty Silverman,
00:34professor emeritus and university
00:36chairman emeritus at the Department of
00:38Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at
00:40the Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
00:43a post he held for 23 years. The
00:46Karasu lecture will identify leading
00:48speakers from around the world who
00:50exemplify academic leadership or
00:52who address critical processes of leadership.
00:55I'd like to say a few words about our friend.
01:00An alumnus Doctor Karasu.
01:01After graduating from the psychiatry
01:04residency in 1969, Doctor Karasu emerged
01:06as a leading expert on
01:08the practice of psychiatry.
01:10He chaired the Apas Commission
01:12on Psychiatric Therapies,
01:14which produced a definitive
01:15text that included from
01:17over 400 scholars,
01:19researchers, and clinicians.
01:21In this four volume report was
01:24really acknowledged as a landmark
01:26at its time by groups like Atlantic,
01:29Monthly and Contemporary Psychiatry.
01:31Doctor cared, Karasu has
01:33written a total of 21 books,
01:35including psychotherapy for depression,
01:37deconstruction of psychotherapy, the art
01:39of Serenity, and many, many other books.
01:42We're proud to have a lecture that
01:45celebrates the contributions of
01:46Doctor Karasu to the field
01:48of psychiatry, as well as to
01:50leadership and important quality that we
01:52nurture in our department. Doctor Stephanie
01:56O'Malley will now introduce our inaugural
01:59Karasu leadership lecture,
02:01Doctor Mary Gentili
02:05Thank you, John. It's my pleasure to
02:08introduce the inaugural lecture today,
02:11Doctor Mary Gentili,
02:12Doctor Gentili is the Creator
02:14director of giving voice to values.
02:17She's a professor of practice
02:19at the University of Virginia,
02:22Darden School of Business,
02:23senior adviser at the Aspen Institute,
02:26Business and Society program,
02:28Anna Consultant on Management,
02:30Education and Leadership Development.
02:32Her work on giving voice to values,
02:35which we'll hear about today,
02:37is a pioneering business curriculum
02:39for values driven leadership that
02:41has been featured in publications
02:43such as the Financial Times,
02:45Harvard Business Review,
02:46Stanford Social Innovation Review,
02:48and McKinsey Quarterly.
02:49The ethics program she developed,
02:52based on her award-winning book,
02:54is giving voice to values,
02:55how to speak your mind
02:57when you know what's right,
02:59which was published at Yale University.
03:01Press has been implemented in over 1000
03:05universities and organizations globally.
03:07Doctor Gentili has also held various
03:09positions as a faculty member,
03:11an case researcher,
03:13including ten years at Harvard,
03:15where she was one of the
03:17principal architects of Harvard's
03:19Business School leadership,
03:20ethics and corporate
03:22responsibility curriculum.
03:23Mary is the recipient of many
03:25honors and Lifetime achievement
03:27awards and ethical leadership,
03:29including accolades as one of the
03:31most influential figures today in
03:33business Ethics Compliance Week,
03:35who recently bestowed their Top
03:37Minds award to Doctor Gentili.
03:39Dubbed her quote the practical ethicist
03:41for her approach to values driven leadership.
03:45So with this brief introduction,
03:47I hope I've given you a sense about
03:49her many accomplishments and why we
03:51selected her to give the lecture today.
03:54The topic of her talk is giving
03:56voice to values the how to
03:59values driven leadership.
04:00Thank you.
04:02Thanks so much Doctor,
04:03Crystal and Doctor O'Malley.
04:05I'm really happy to be here.
04:07It's an honor to be part of the
04:09Karasu lecture series on leadership.
04:12An I'm really happy to have a
04:14chance to share my work with,
04:16giving voice to values with you all today.
04:19As you probably guessed from
04:21Doctor O'malley's introduction,
04:22giving voice to values
04:24or GV as I refer to it,
04:26was developed as a values driven
04:28leadership development program for
04:30for business folks for business
04:32students and business professionals.
04:33But it's actually now grown well
04:36beyond the original origins,
04:37and we've working with law.
04:39Schools were working with
04:41engineering schools.
04:42We worked with health care and
04:44medical and nursing education,
04:46and we've worked with the US military
04:48and and the Australian Police
04:51Force and the UN and the IAEA,
04:53etc etc.
04:54So I'm hoping that although the
04:57origins will be clear from the
04:59stories I share with you today,
05:01and they'll be examples from business
05:04and organizational settings.
05:05I'm hoping that you'll find
05:07ways that this will feel useful
05:09to you in your work as well,
05:11and and I hope to basically
05:13share some stories with you
05:14about the origins of this work.
05:16Talk a little bit about the research
05:18and the concepts that it's based on
05:21and how it's been used and then open
05:23up for some questions and discussion.
05:25So with that,
05:26let me let me start giving voice to values,
05:29or GV is it's a new approach,
05:31relatively new approach,
05:32innovative approach to values
05:34driven leadership development and.
05:36I always say to people that if
05:37you if you don't remember anything
05:39else from what I'm about to say,
05:42I know we all spend inordinate
05:43amounts of time on zoom these days.
05:45I'm going to give you the bottom
05:48line 1st and then I'll step back
05:50and tell you how we got there.
05:52But the bottom line is that giving
05:54voice to values is about asking and
05:56answering a different question.
05:57A new question when it comes to ethics
05:59and values in our organizational
06:01lives in our educational lives
06:03and in our wider lives.
06:04So the typical Ant.
06:06Question that we tend to ask and try
06:09to answer when we talk about ethics
06:11is what is the right thing to do in
06:14any particular situation and will
06:16often share very thorny ethical dilemmas,
06:18and they'll be fascinating and often
06:20non conclusive debates and discussions
06:22about what the right thing to do is.
06:25I'm sure many of you may have heard
06:28Michael Sandel's wonderful lectures
06:29and classes on this at Harvard,
06:32and they're fascinating,
06:33but giving voice to values is about asking.
06:36Answering a different question.
06:37It's about asking and trying
06:39to answer the question.
06:40Once you know what you believe
06:42the right thing to do is how do
06:45you get it done effectively?
06:46What do you need to say and do?
06:49What data or information do you need
06:51to gather and you need to reframe
06:53the entire situation in order to
06:55make an impact.
06:56And once you raise the issue,
06:58what kind of pushback or
07:00objections are you likely to face?
07:02We call those the reasons and
07:04rationalizations in GBV parlance,
07:05and then what would you say to respond
07:07to those rationalizations and reasons?
07:10And is this something you're going
07:11to do one on, one on your own,
07:14or is this something where you
07:16need to build a set of allies?
07:18And is this a one off kind of situation,
07:21or is it really a systemic challenge?
07:23And if it's a systemic challenge,
07:25it really needs to be addressed
07:26in that way systemically,
07:28but what I would often see in organizations
07:30and in classrooms is that once you
07:32identified an issue as systemic,
07:34people felt that individually
07:35they were off the hook.
07:36And when you really look at when any
07:39kind of systemic change happens,
07:40it's because of a sequence
07:42of individual actions.
07:43And so GV would actually then say,
07:45OK, how would you begin to
07:47address this issue systemically?
07:48So that in and of itself is,
07:50that is the heart,
07:51the key message of GV that in
07:53our discussions we focus less on
07:55what is the right thing to do,
07:57and more on once you know what's right.
07:59How do you get it done now?
08:01There's a lot of reasons why we do this,
08:03and I'm going to take a step back and
08:05tell you some stories that hopefully
08:07will illustrate why we do this
08:09and why we think it actually helps
08:11people come to better decisions.
08:13Ultimately, even about what.
08:14The right thing to do is not
08:15just how to get it done.
08:17So let me take a step back and
08:19tell you this really grew up.
08:22For me,
08:22it grew out of what I call a crisis of faith.
08:26I had been working in the field of
08:29business education for several decades.
08:31Graduate business education
08:32primarily at Harvard Business School,
08:34but also consulting and advising
08:35and other business schools.
08:37And, you know,
08:38I became disillusioned and began to feel,
08:40you know,
08:41at best our efforts to try and address
08:44values and ethics in these settings was.
08:47Futile and at worst it was hypocritical
08:49and there were a number of reasons
08:51why I came to these conclusions.
08:53I guess the first is really what
08:54I experienced in the Business
08:56School environment,
08:57which was that it seemed that every
08:58few years there would be a spate of
09:01scandals that would hit the business press.
09:03So in the 70s we had the defense
09:06industry scandals in the 80s we had the
09:09insider trading scandals and we had.
09:11Wehadthe.com bubble and then we had
09:13Enron and world com and galleon and
09:15palm alot and more recently we've
09:17had Volkswagen and Wells Fargo
09:18and you know the list goes on and
09:20whenever we would tend to hit a
09:22spate of these kinds of scandals
09:24if you happen to be working in the
09:27leading Business School as I was,
09:29we would create a task force.
09:31This may be familiar to you.
09:32We would create a committee and
09:34I was always on the committee and
09:36the committee was to try and take
09:39a look at what are we really doing
09:41because it was graduates from these.
09:43Business schools these these leading
09:45business schools were often on
09:46the front pages of the papers.
09:48You know, as the architects
09:50of these various scandals.
09:51And so you know,
09:52we would look at the curriculum.
09:54We would interview faculty and
09:56students and alumnae and recruiters,
09:57and typically what we would
09:59come up with is we would design
10:01a new course or a new module.
10:03We maybe hire some new faculty.
10:05Sometimes we create a new research
10:07initiative and we would send out the
10:10press releases and then a few years
10:12later the whole cycle would start again.
10:14And I had lived through
10:16this cycle several times,
10:17and so you know that was beginning
10:20to feel a little old.
10:21So that was one of the reasons
10:24for my crisis of faith.
10:25The second reason was more personally,
10:28and this happened around the late 90s.
10:30A friend and colleague of mine,
10:32Kirk Hansen,
10:33who used to run the business ethics
10:35education program at Stanford University,
10:37left Stanford and went to run the
10:39Markkula Center for Professional
10:40Ethics at Santa Clara University,
10:42and he decided to host.
10:44The debate and he was going to
10:46have the debate issue is going to
10:48be after 25 years of quarter of
10:50a century of good faith efforts
10:52trying to address values and ethics
10:54in our graduate business education
10:55on one side of the debate he would
10:58have people saying we've made a
11:00huge amount of progress and on the
11:01negative side of the debate we be
11:03having people saying we haven't made
11:05any progress and on the negative side
11:07one of the speakers was Milton Friedman son.
11:10So you can sort of imagine
11:12what he might have had to say.
11:14And Kirk asked me to be on the
11:16side of the debate to speak about
11:18how we had made all this progress,
11:20'cause he knew I'd been working in
11:22this field for for quite awhile,
11:24and it was sort of a watershed
11:26moment for me because I sat down
11:28to write my remarks and.
11:30I had this moment where I thought
11:32can I lie on an ethics panel?
11:34Because when I tried to think about
11:37all this progress we had made,
11:38I had my doubts and so I ended up
11:40writing something that was somewhat nuanced.
11:43You know, we talked about how any
11:45of us who are educators or managers,
11:47but especially educators,
11:48know that those individuals that
11:50we've had an impact on.
11:51But if I were to try to speak more broadly,
11:54I really couldn't say that we
11:56had made that much progress.
11:57Who's not exactly what Kirk
11:59was hoping I'd say,
12:00but it really was.
12:02The best I could say honestly,
12:03and that was sort of like I say,
12:06a kind of watershed moment for me,
12:08and then the last reason or the third
12:10reason I mention for why I had this
12:12crisis of faith was actually what I
12:14would see in the classroom or what
12:16I would see in corporate settings
12:18when I was involved with any kind of
12:20training or consulting when we were
12:22trying to talk about ethics and values.
12:24And it was this.
12:25Typically what we would do is that we
12:28would share some thorny ethical dilemma,
12:30some of scenario and people would read
12:32this scenario before they walked into
12:33the room and they would come into the
12:36conversation with an idea of what they
12:38thought the right thing to do was.
12:39But then in the course of the conversation,
12:42in the course of the discussion.
12:44Two things would happen.
12:45The first thing that would happen is
12:48people's thinking would become more complex.
12:50They would begin to realize that you know,
12:53maybe maybe I didn't have
12:55all the information.
12:56Or maybe this is standard operating
12:58procedure in this company or in this
13:01industry or in this part of the world.
13:03Or maybe it is wrong,
13:05but it's it's really above my pay grade.
13:08It's not my responsibility,
13:09or if I try to do something I'm
13:11not likely to be effective.
13:14I might make it worse.
13:15At least for myself,
13:16so their thinking would become more complex.
13:19I actually think this is a good thing.
13:21You don't want people to walk
13:23into these situations naively.
13:25But the second thing that would happen
13:27in these conversations with more
13:29troubling to me, and it was this.
13:31I don't know if you had this experience
13:33in your classes and in your work experiences,
13:36but there would typically be one or
13:38two or three people in the room who,
13:40when they spoke,
13:41everyone would turn to listen to
13:43them in corporate settings.
13:44These tended to be the people of the
13:46highest rank in the room in a classroom.
13:49You know,
13:49they might be the person who is
13:51the most articulate,
13:52the one who could always communicate it.
13:55A complex idea in a very clear and ***** way.
13:58Sometimes they were the the students
14:00who could always tell a witty
14:02story to illustrate their point,
14:03but whatever it was when those folks spoke.
14:06The ones that everyone listened to.
14:08They were usually the ones who were
14:10expressing the most sceptical,
14:12if not cynical positions.
14:13They were usually the people who were saying,
14:15I know what you want me to say,
14:18Mary, but in the real world,
14:20that's just not possible.
14:21So my fear was that people were
14:24walking out of these conversations
14:26more confused and less empowered,
14:29and you know,
14:30really didn't feel like an optimal outcome,
14:33and I began to think, you know.
14:37I've got some skills that life is short.
14:39I want to do something that matters
14:41and so I decided to take a step back
14:43from this work to stop working in
14:45this area for a while and I did.
14:47This was back in the in the late 90s.
14:50And around that time I had a number
14:53of experiences that led to the
14:55creation of GV as a way to hopefully
14:58address this crisis of faith.
15:00So one of them was.
15:02I got a consulting gig at Columbia
15:05Business School, and while I was
15:07there working on a project over here,
15:10there were a group of senior faculty
15:12in in core areas, finance, economics,
15:15public sector, government policy,
15:16accounting, business law,
15:18who were still working on this issue of.
15:21Ethics in business education and
15:22they knew about the work I had
15:25done for 10 years at Harvard and
15:27so they asked me if I would take
15:29a look at what they were doing.
15:30So this is what they were doing.
15:32This was their idea, not mine.
15:34They were asking all of the incoming
15:36graduate business students upon
15:37matriculation during orientation.
15:38To answer one question and to jot
15:40it down and just a paragraph or two.
15:43No more than a page they didn't
15:44have to put their names on it.
15:47They didn't have to name the organizations.
15:49The question was this.
15:50Tell us about a time in your work
15:52experience so far when you were
15:55explicitly told or implicitly pressured
15:57to do something that conflicted with
15:59your own values and how you handled it.
16:04So they all wrote these little examples,
16:05right?
16:06So they collected hundreds of these at the.
16:08At that time there were about 600
16:10students in an incoming cohort,
16:11and they said,
16:12you know,
16:13we've got all these stories and we're
16:15trying to figure out how to use them.
16:17Would you take a look at them so I
16:19read hundreds and hundreds of these?
16:21Well over 1000 over several years
16:23and it was really interesting.
16:24So let me tell you what we learned.
16:26So the first thing we learned
16:28if you think about the kinds of
16:30people who get their MBA,
16:31the graduate business degree at Columbia,
16:33at least at that time.
16:35They tended to have two 3-4 years
16:37of work experience already,
16:38so the first thing we learned is
16:40that I could probably count on one
16:42hand the number of them who said I
16:44was never asked or pressured to do
16:46something that conflicted with my values.
16:48They pretty much all had stories to
16:50tell since the first thing we learned.
16:52The second thing we learned is,
16:54again, if you look at the kinds
16:56of folks who get an MBA there,
16:58it's in New York City.
17:00Certain industries tended to
17:01be more heavily represented,
17:02so there were a lot of people from.
17:05The big accounting firms and consulting
17:07firms and Mckinsey's of the world.
17:08There were a lot of people from
17:11the financial sector because it
17:12was in New York City.
17:14There were a good number of people
17:16from Big Pharma because many of the
17:18multinational pharmaceutical companies
17:20have headquarters in the tristate area.
17:22Some high tech,
17:23so because certain industries
17:24were more heavily represented,
17:26the kinds of examples they gave
17:29got repetitions very quickly,
17:30so they talked about things
17:32like being pressured to inflate
17:34or deflate their billable hours
17:36in a way that didn't correspond
17:38to the work they were doing.
17:40They talked about being pressured
17:42to tamper with or adjust the
17:44benchmarks and the frameworks and
17:46analytics they used to determine
17:48the relative financial advantages
17:50or disadvantages of a particular.
17:52Transaction in order to encourage
17:54their clients to take the action
17:56that would maximize revenue for
17:58their firm for their employer.
18:00They talked about being pressured
18:02to exaggerate or puff up the
18:04capabilities of the new product.
18:06A new piece of software,
18:08a new pharmaceutical product,
18:10beyond what the data could actually support
18:13in order to maximize sales revenues.
18:15They talked about being pressured to
18:17engage in various forms of corruption,
18:20bribery,
18:20or facilitating payments in order to gain
18:23access to certain international markets,
18:25or in order to gain access to certain RFP's.
18:29And there were.
18:30Always the ubiquitous human resource issues
18:32around hiring and firing and discrimination,
18:35fairness, bullying.
18:36But although the examples got
18:38repetitions very quickly,
18:39their responses differed and their responses
18:42fell into three recognizable buckets.
18:44So again,
18:45this is self reporting is not empirical data,
18:49but it was provocative,
18:50and so the first bucket,
18:52the largest bucket,
18:54little less than half of them,
18:56said yes they had this kind of conflict.
19:00And it bothered them.
19:01It didn't just roll off their backs,
19:03but they didn't really
19:04think they had a choice.
19:06So they just sucked it up and
19:08did what they were asked to do.
19:10That was the largest Group
19:11A little less than half.
19:12And then there was a small
19:14group who said yes,
19:15I had this kind of conflict.
19:17It bothered me.
19:18It bothered me so much that I
19:19couldn't bring myself to do it.
19:21But I also didn't think I had any choices.
19:24So these people remove
19:25themselves from the situation,
19:26so some of them got themselves transferred
19:28to a different manager or work group.
19:30And a few of them even quit their jobs.
19:33But this was a small group and now
19:35the remainder of the whole groups.
19:37And now we're talking about,
19:38oh, about a third of them said,
19:41yes,
19:41I have this conflict and it bothered
19:43me and I tried to do something
19:45about it and a small group of those
19:47folks that I tried and failed.
19:49But about 1/4 of the whole group said I
19:52tried an by my lights, I was successful.
19:55So we thought, well,
19:56this is kind of interesting.
19:58There they are all people who
19:59got into Columbia.
20:00They've got, you know,
20:01some level of ability that has
20:03been assessed to be comprable.
20:05They're talking about the
20:06same kinds of examples there,
20:07often talking about the same organizations,
20:09and yet some of them were
20:10able to do this effectively,
20:12and so many of them were not.
20:14So we thought,
20:15well,
20:15let's take a little closer look and
20:18see if we can learn something from
20:20these stories that will give us
20:21ideas and some some levers to pull
20:23for it for pedagogical reasons,
20:25for teaching. So we brought in a
20:27researcher to kind of slice and dice
20:29the stories and look close closely
20:30and look for patterns and themes.
20:32And in the end, we couldn't say
20:34that one group was more morally
20:36troubled than the other group in
20:37terms of how they expressed their
20:40their perspective perspective,
20:41because it wasn't like we gave them a
20:44scenario and it mattered to some of them,
20:46but it didn't seem that important to
20:48others because they all were defining
20:50an issue that they said bothered them.
20:52We let them define the issue and
20:55it wasn't that one group was more,
20:57you know, organizationally,
20:58savvy or politically sophisticated
20:59than the other group,
21:00because some of them did, in fact,
21:03come up with these very clever win wins.
21:05You know, the.
21:06Very clever solutions,
21:07but some of them were really kind of
21:10naive and even clumsy in the way they did it.
21:13So in the end the only thing that
21:16that that we could really say was
21:18that those folks who were able to do
21:21this effectively at some point said
21:23something outside of their own heads,
21:25and it might have started by talking
21:28to a friend or spouse or partner,
21:30but eventually it found its way
21:33into the organization and change
21:35the trajectory of things.
21:36So when when I heard that I
21:38kind of I was disappointed.
21:40I kind of went back to my crisis of faith.
21:43It's a little bit of an identity
21:45theme with me and you know,
21:47I thought I was hoping for some
21:49really interesting insight.
21:50Or, you know string to pull lever to push.
21:53That would give us some ideas about
21:55how to have more impact in our in
21:58our education educational effort.
21:59And I was disappointed.
22:01But then I remembered some research
22:03that I had seen years earlier
22:05when I was still at Harvard.
22:07It was two scholars,
22:08Douglas Conquian Perry London,
22:10who independently decided they
22:11were going to do some qualitative
22:13research on what they were calling
22:15moral courage and moral conviction.
22:17What they wanted to do was to to
22:19look at people who had acted with
22:22real conviction with more conviction
22:24in times of very high stakes,
22:26very high risk, and they wanted to
22:28understand if there were various.
22:30Family background,
22:31personal experiences,
22:32personalities,
22:32religious experience,
22:33whatever that may have led them
22:35to behave in this way,
22:37and so they both independently decided
22:39that the populations that they would
22:41look at where the folks who are often
22:44referred to as rescuers from World War Two.
22:47So these are people who put their lives at
22:50stake to help others during the Holocaust,
22:52when many others did not.
22:56So they they did the research and you know
22:58they came up with a set of characteristics,
23:01most of which I frankly don't recall.
23:03But there was one that
23:05really resonated with me,
23:06probably because I was an
23:08educator and it was this.
23:09They said that the folks
23:11who had found who had
23:12acted with this kind of conviction in
23:14these high risk situations all reported
23:16that an earlier point in their lives,
23:19usually as a young adult,
23:20they'd had an experience with
23:22someone more senior to them.
23:23So a boss, a teacher,
23:25a mentor, even apparent.
23:27They had the experience of rehearsing
23:30out loud the answer to the question
23:32what would you do if and then
23:35various kinds of moral conflicts?
23:37So this is you know,
23:38of course they couldn't have
23:40anticipated the Holocaust,
23:41but they had had this experience
23:43of pre scripting and rehearsal
23:45and coaching and they had this
23:47experience both at the intellectual
23:48level but also the behavioral level.
23:51So at the intellectual level they had
23:53named the values that was important to them.
23:56They created an articulation
23:57script set of words,
23:58but at the behavioral level they had
24:01the experience of literally voicing
24:03it out loud to someone more senior
24:05to them who stood in as proxy.
24:07Are the kinds of folks they might need to
24:10speak with in the actual circumstances,
24:12so I thought this was kind of intriguing.
24:15It certainly wasn't what we did
24:17in our business ethics courses,
24:19and so I thought well bore
24:21a little more exploration.
24:23So we did two kinds of exploration.
24:25The first was we gathered stories.
24:27I already had all those hundreds
24:29of stories from Columbia students,
24:31but I started interviewing people at
24:33different levels within organizations,
24:35people right up school all the
24:37way to C-Suite executives.
24:39And asking them that question from
24:41Columbia tell me about sometimes
24:42when your own values conflicted with
24:45what you were told or pressured
24:46to do and how you handled it.
24:48And we gathered a lot of stories,
24:51both of successful efforts and
24:53also not so much.
24:54And then we also the other kind
24:57of exploration we did is we looked
24:59at some of the research.
25:01I'm not a social scientist,
25:02but there was a lot of research
25:05that was coming out around this
25:07time 1012 years ago.
25:08There's more now from different
25:10fields that was reinforcing this
25:11idea around rehearsal and practice
25:13and peer coaching in psychology.
25:15The folks who study well there
25:16was a lot of work around habit
25:19formation for example,
25:20but there was also the folks
25:22who study positive deviance.
25:23Individuals who deviate from the
25:25norm but in a positive direction.
25:27They had a nice phrase.
25:29This is their phrase, not mine.
25:30They say if you want to have an
25:32impact on people's behavior rather
25:34than asking them to think their
25:36way into a different way of acting,
25:38it's often more effective to
25:39have them act their way into a
25:41different way of thinking.
25:42So I thought that was kind of
25:45interesting and there was.
25:47And then I was looking at the research
25:49in those research in neuroscience,
25:51cognitive neuroscience.
25:51As you all know, more about that than I.
25:54But there was research that I
25:55was reading about in terms of
25:57brain plasticity and in terms of
25:59creating new neural pathways.
26:00But but the example I want to give you
26:03because it's more tangible and hopefully
26:04makes us a little more concrete,
26:06comes from the field of kinesthetic.
26:08So the study of physical movement.
26:10So I want to just tell you a little
26:12story around this time when I first went
26:15to work at Harvard Business School.
26:17I decided to take a self defense class.
26:19Now I was a lucky person.
26:21I had never in my life felt the need
26:23to take a self defense class until
26:25I went to Harvard Business School.
26:27And then I thought maybe I needed to do that.
26:30So I looked around Boston and there
26:32were a lot of these courses and they
26:34all pretty much teach the same things.
26:37They teach you the physical moves,
26:38so it's fist a bridge of nose or heel
26:41to instep or need to growing and they
26:43have you practice these moves in
26:45the air and then you know the idea
26:47is now if anyone ever attacks me.
26:50I know what to do right,
26:51but there was one class that was different.
26:54It was called model mugging and it was a
26:56developmental model so they would still,
26:58you know,
26:58have you learn these moves and
27:00practice them in the air?
27:01But then once you knew them they would
27:04bring in a gentleman in a padded suit,
27:06sort of like the Michelin man.
27:08If you remember him and they would
27:09line us all up and we would take
27:12turns getting attacked full force by
27:13this gentleman and then you could use
27:15these new moves you've learned on him
27:17because he was protected and in the
27:19beginning it was sort of ludicrous.
27:21Because you just stood there,
27:22waiting your turn to get attacked.
27:24But as the class went on week after week,
27:27I would be talking to someone over here.
27:29He might come and grab me.
27:31I would never know when I would never
27:33know what hold he was going to use it with.
27:36Utterly nerve wracking,
27:36but they explained to us and those
27:39of you who are athletes will be
27:40familiar with this.
27:41They explained to this that this was based
27:43on this idea of specific state muscle memory.
27:46So the idea was if you rehearsed
27:47something in the same physiological
27:49and emotional and cognitive state that
27:51you'd be in when you need to use it.
27:53That even if you freeze in that moment,
27:56your body remembers.
27:57So the tennis Pro will practice her,
28:00serve over and over before she
28:02goes to the tournament.
28:03So when she's there under all that stress,
28:06she just naturally assumes the proper form.
28:08So one day I'm in this class and
28:10I am lying on my back on the floor
28:13because I have failed to protect
28:15myself and I was thinking,
28:18could you create a kind of
28:20moral muscle memory?
28:21Could you create a default to voice?
28:23But not just to speaking up,
28:26because what I was learning from all
28:28these interviews I was doing well.
28:30These conversations I was having
28:32with with you know executives and
28:34managers and practitioners with that,
28:35the ones who did this successfully.
28:37It was not so much a matter
28:40of blowing the whistle.
28:41It was not so much a matter of,
28:44you know, shaking their fist
28:46and speaking truth to power.
28:47It was much more strategic.
28:49It was much more tactical,
28:51is much more nuanced.
28:52It was much more an example of.
28:55Skillful communication and influence
28:56rather than it was about a kind of
28:59assertion or accusation, and so I wanted.
29:01So I wanted to think about.
29:04Could we have a default to informed voice?
29:06Because the other thing I was learning
29:09is that the kinds of objections,
29:11the kinds of as I called them earlier
29:13reasons and rationalizations that
29:15people encountered when they tried
29:17to address issues in the workplace.
29:19There were certain patterns that came up
29:21again and again they were predictable.
29:24They were powerful.
29:25But they weren't necessarily bulletproof,
29:26but they were very hard to
29:28respond to in the moment.
29:30If you hadn't really rehearsed or
29:31practiced or were not prepared.
29:33So what I wanted to do
29:35was to create a kind of.
29:38Pedagogy that would allow us to predict
29:40an practice these skills in these scripts.
29:43So then I went back and looked at what
29:45we actually taught when we tried to
29:47teach about ethics in organizational
29:49settings or other settings,
29:51whether it was in school or whether
29:53it was in corporate training.
29:55Other organizational training.
29:58Then I got discouraged again,
29:59because what we typically would do is
30:02we would teach what we would name.
30:04I did this myself.
30:06We would name it awareness and analysis.
30:08So by awareness,
30:09what we meant is we're going to
30:11introduce you to the kinds of conflicts
30:14that you might encounter in the workplace,
30:17and so that you can predict them so
30:19that you will be familiar with them.
30:22So you'll recognize them.
30:23This is, of course important,
30:25especially in a world where organizations
30:27are increasingly globalized.
30:29Where technology is developing
30:30so rapidly that the kinds of
30:32issues we're facing,
30:33we didn't even think about previously.
30:35You know,
30:36you know I'm working now with some,
30:39some given with values,
30:40case development around embedded bias and
30:42in the algorithms used in various types
30:45of artificial intelligence products.
30:46You know this was not something
30:49people were talking about when I
30:51was teaching at the Business School,
30:53and so you know,
30:54you do need to teach awareness.
30:57It's necessary.
30:58It's not sufficient.
31:00If you think about the kinds of examples
31:02I gave at the beginning of my remarks,
31:05those were examples where there
31:07were definitely people who knew
31:08something was wrong in those
31:10various scandals that I enumerated.
31:12But they didn't necessarily feel like
31:14they could do anything about it,
31:16so awareness necessary, but not sufficient.
31:18And then the second thing we would
31:20do is we would teach analysis.
31:22So if we were in a corporate setting,
31:25this meant teaching the relevant rules,
31:27laws, regulations,
31:28the organizational code of conduct.
31:30If you're in a profession,
31:31there's usually a professional
31:33code of conduct code of ethics.
31:35If you were in an academic setting,
31:38this usually meant teaching the
31:39models of ethical reasoning
31:41that come from philosophy.
31:42So the ontology,
31:44utilitarianism, virtue ethics.
31:45And then what we would do is we
31:47would share scenarios whether
31:49it was in the corporate setting
31:51over the academic setting and
31:53says this over the line or not.
31:55How what is right in these situations?
31:57And again, this isn't very important,
31:59it's necessary because you want
32:01to be able to teach people or
32:03give people the opportunity to
32:04learn to think rigorously and
32:06consistently about these issues.
32:08Just 'cause I think it's right or
32:10wrong doesn't mean everyone does.
32:11And how do I negotiate or
32:14navigate that thinking?
32:15But again,
32:16it's not sufficient,
32:17and I think the best way to illustrate
32:19that is is another example I told you.
32:22I interviewed a lot of people in
32:23one of the gentleman I interviewed
32:25with the CEO and entrepreneur.
32:27He had his own consumer product
32:29firm based in the US,
32:31privately held and a lot of people
32:33said you should go speak with
32:35this this gentleman because he's
32:36very thoughtful about ethics and
32:38values in organizational settings.
32:40So I did.
32:42And.
32:43He said he went to tell me a
32:45story so he said he was recently
32:48looking to hire A graduate from
32:50one of the top business schools
32:52to take a very high potential
32:54position in his organization,
32:55and somebody who is really going to
32:57try and develop and move throughout
32:59the organization and his human
33:01resources department recommended
33:02two or three finalists to him,
33:04and then he was doing the final interview
33:07and he said he had a young man in his office.
33:11This recent graduate and he asked
33:13him in the interview.
33:14Did you take an ethics class in your
33:17graduate work and the young man said,
33:20well, yes, it was required.
33:22So the CEO said, well,
33:23what did you learn?
33:25So this this gentleman said.
33:27Well, I learned all the
33:28models of ethical reasoning,
33:30utilitarianism, the ontology,
33:31virtue,
33:31ethics,
33:32and then I learned that whenever
33:34you encounter a values conflict,
33:36you should decide what you want
33:38to do and then select the model
33:40of ethical reasoning that will
33:43best support which you want to do.
33:45Now,
33:46this wasn't what the professor was hoping.
33:48This gentleman will walk away with
33:50and the CEO who was telling me this
33:53story was sort of yanking my chain.
33:55He was kind of, you know,
33:57smirking at me because I was the ethics lady,
34:00right? But there was a lot of truth to this.
34:04I mean,
34:04these models of ethical reasoning
34:06by design conflict.
34:07That's why they're valuable,
34:08because what you see from a duty
34:10based perspective you might miss
34:12from a consequentialist perspective.
34:14So you know.
34:15By design they conflict,
34:17so they don't tell you what's right.
34:19They help you think rigorously
34:21and then once you've decided
34:23what's right, they certainly
34:24don't tell you how to get it done,
34:27and so used poorly or or,
34:29or taken in poorly, they can become a
34:31kind of schooling for sophistry, which
34:34is what I would often see in classrooms,
34:37and what certainly this candidate that the
34:39CEO is telling me about took from there,
34:42from their ethics from his ethics class.
34:45So I thought OK,
34:47awareness and analysis both necessary,
34:48neither sufficient.
34:49And So what we really needed was when I
34:52called the third day or action we needed
34:54a pedagogy to actually help people.
34:57Once they had decided what they believe the
35:00right thing to do was to put it into action,
35:03affectively, successfully.
35:04And so then you know, I thought, well,
35:06we do need a different teaching technology.
35:09We need a different pedagogy.
35:11And so we ended up created what we
35:13call the giving voice to values.
35:15Thought experiment GGV thought experiment.
35:17I was very familiar with the case
35:19method when I've been at Harvard.
35:22I used to hire and train and run
35:24their their case writing program.
35:2660 case riders in all fields,
35:28you know, human resources,
35:29organizational behavior,
35:30finance, accounting,
35:31marketing,
35:31who would write the case studies that we
35:34would use so was very familiar with those.
35:36I'm sure you've all seen them.
35:38They tend to be 15 to 20 pages long.
35:42They feature usually the CEO,
35:43senior executive and they end with.
35:45That executive leaning back and
35:47their chair or looking out the
35:49window and saying what should I do?
35:51And this this is a great way to
35:53teach analysis and awareness,
35:55awareness and analysis.
35:56As I was saying,
35:57it didn't really teach action.
35:59In fact,
35:59it was almost like you would spend
36:01the whole 90 minutes or or two hours
36:04of a class discussing what was right.
36:06And then what the right thing to do was.
36:09And then in the last five minutes
36:11it's like and then you create an
36:13implementation plan, you know.
36:15And so.
36:15So I thought, well,
36:17we really need a different teaching tool,
36:19so we created these given with values,
36:22thought experiments there still
36:23scenario based I think,
36:25and they're all based on real scenarios,
36:27mostly disguised for obvious reasons.
36:29But I still think that's very important.
36:31But what we do is they tend to be
36:34much shorter, often they're just,
36:36you know, a couple pages.
36:38Sometimes they're longer,
36:39but they tend to be shorter than
36:41the Harvard cases or the Harvard
36:43typical business case study.
36:44They feature people at every level.
36:47In the organization because as we
36:48learn from that Columbia example,
36:50people start encountering
36:51values conflicts right away.
36:52It's not like you have to wait till
36:54your CEO to have a values conflict.
36:57In fact,
36:57students would too often say in class
36:59when we discussed ethics that well.
37:01When I get to be CEO, I can deal with this,
37:05but right now I can't.
37:06You know which is interesting
37:08because it reveals a stunning
37:10amount of arrogance because
37:11they all assumed they were going
37:13to be CEO's. But it also suggests
37:15that if you don't act this way.
37:17Throughout your career,
37:18you're still going to be
37:20someone who cares about it.
37:21By the time you get to be CEO,
37:23so you know we tried to have people
37:25at every level in the organization,
37:27but the big difference in our
37:29scenarios is that they are what one
37:31Dean called Post decision making.
37:32In other words,
37:33they end with a protagonist who's
37:35already decided what he or she
37:37thinks the right thing to do is,
37:38and the question is,
37:39how could they get it done effectively?
37:41What would they need to say and do?
37:44What would the objections be and
37:45then what would they say and do?
37:47And what data do they need?
37:49How do they reframe the challenge an
37:51how do they structure a longer term
37:54intervention if that's what's required?
37:57And so we wanted to make them to
37:59do that for a number of reasons.
38:01A lot of it has to do with some of
38:03the research that was coming out about
38:06how people actually confront values
38:07conflicts that I was first exposed
38:09to these ideas with Jonathan Hight,
38:11the psychologist who was at UBS now.
38:13Then why you?
38:16The paper it was called something like the.
38:19The emotional tail that
38:21wags the rational dog.
38:22But the idea was that when we encounter
38:25values conflicts we we don't typically
38:28sit down and say what would Aristotle
38:30say or what would John Rawls say?
38:33We don't make pros and cons list.
38:36Typically we tend to react automatically,
38:38emotionally, even unconsciously,
38:40and then we rationalize post hoc why
38:44it was the right thing to do or why
38:46it was the only thing we could do.
38:49We don't do this because we're evil.
38:52We do this.
38:53It's a self protective measure, right?
38:55To avoid the cognitive dissonance of,
38:57you know, knowing something's
38:58wrong in doing it anyways,
39:00and we're talking here,
39:01not about people who are intentional's.
39:03You know, these are people who,
39:05like most of us,
39:06know that we're not we're not
39:08sociopaths or psychopaths,
39:10but we're we're actually just
39:12protecting ourselves in this way and so.
39:15I thought to myself,
39:16well,
39:16you know if that's the way people
39:19approach these issues.
39:21What we really need to do is to kind
39:23of rewire that automatic response right.
39:25And so we decided to go with
39:27this post decision making model.
39:29Don't ask people what would you do I.
39:31Instead we ask what if you were
39:33this person who wants to do this?
39:35How would you get it done?
39:37We do that because if we ask
39:39people what would you do,
39:41I tend to get three kinds of answers.
39:43I either get the answer that people
39:45would say well I would do the
39:47right thing whenever that is in the
39:49circumstance and they may really mean it.
39:51But we know from experience that
39:53that often isn't what happens
39:54for a lot of reasons.
39:56Or you get people who will say.
39:59You know, I know what you want me to say,
40:02but it's it's not feasible.
40:03It's not possible.
40:04Or in those people may be really
40:06just trying to be very honest,
40:08or they may be playing devil's advocate,
40:10but you know, and then you get people
40:12who just argue with the premise.
40:13If it was not wrong, right?
40:15So any of those responses in an educational
40:18setting are not going to get you to
40:20the rehearsal in the pre scripting in
40:22the coaching that I'm talking about.
40:23So instead we ask people what if you
40:26were this person who wants to do this?
40:28How could they get it done?
40:30And the idea is that that kind of frees up
40:33more of your creativity, more innovation.
40:35It brings the emotion down.
40:37It brings the pressure down.
40:38We know from the research about creativity
40:41that people are more creative when they
40:43don't have that pressure where they
40:45are on the spot and you trigger that
40:48automatic self protective response.
40:49And so we ask them this,
40:51what if question you know,
40:53I would often observed in the
40:55classroom that students would respond
40:57with a more skeptical or cynical
40:59position in ethics discussions.
41:00Often, seemingly because they
41:02didn't want to look naive,
41:04they didn't want to look,
41:05you know, Pollyannaish.
41:06They wanted to look sophisticated
41:08like they've been around the block,
41:10and so if you frame this question
41:13in this post decision way,
41:15what you're doing is allowing them
41:17to to show that they're smart and
41:19sophisticated by figuring out how
41:21to do the thing that everyone says.
41:24It's impossible to do.
41:25We don't ask them to own that response
41:28until there's actually some options on
41:31the table for how you could enact it.
41:34The idea is that now if they
41:37entire encounter those situations,
41:40they have more models, more examples,
41:43more scripts, more positive cases.
41:47That allows them to believe that they may
41:49be more choices than they originally thought.
41:52What I often find in our
41:53educational settings,
41:54both in corporate settings,
41:55in educational and in classrooms,
41:57is that people tend to see,
41:59and there's been some research on this too,
42:01I believe,
42:02but they tend to see the negative response
42:04as the norm and the positive if they have a
42:07positive response and acting on their values.
42:09They see it as the exception,
42:11and So what we're trying to do is to help
42:14them sort of rewire that a bit and feel like.
42:17That they have more choices.
42:19So that's kind of the giving voice to values,
42:22thought experiment.
42:22So what we did is we set out
42:25to gather all these examples.
42:27We created hundreds of pieces of material.
42:29These short cases with with be cases.
42:31That said what?
42:32How the person actually acted
42:34on their values effectively,
42:35and teaching plans and we and
42:37we made them available for free.
42:39And we asked people to try to
42:41use them to see what happened.
42:44And you know,
42:44in the process of doing this we
42:47created, you know, kind of.
42:48Protocol set of questions to answer.
42:50We identified a lot of exercises to
42:52help people to begin to identify
42:54what enabled them to do this more
42:56effectively or disable them.
42:58We actually came up with seven pillars,
43:00which I won't go through all now,
43:02but if you're interested,
43:04I can share them with you.
43:07These pillars were when I looked at the
43:09people that we interviewed and looked at.
43:12The examples of acting on their values.
43:14They were mindsets or perspectives or
43:17approaches that seem to make it more
43:19likely or or more feasible that they
43:21could act effectively on their values.
43:24And so we identified those things
43:26and we made all the stuff available
43:28and we were fine.
43:30Frankly, kind of stunned at the speed,
43:32an extent of the spread of the approach.
43:35As I said before, it's it's.
43:37It's been used in many,
43:39many business schools,
43:40but as we started we never really
43:42marketed it beyond business schools.
43:44But company started coming to us to use it,
43:47and then other types of organizations,
43:49and then other professions.
43:51As I said earlier,
43:52starting to use the approach
43:54which has been really interesting.
43:55In fact,
43:56we're working on a project right
43:58now around giving voice to values
44:00and and stem ethics.
44:02You know,
44:02because there's so many new issues
44:04in that area, and so it was.
44:07Interesting because then people started
44:09to do some research on the impact of this.
44:12Remember talking to Jonathan Height
44:14and this was years ago when I was
44:16first developing this and he said,
44:18well, how do you? How do you?
44:20Yeah,
44:20explain or or justify the impact
44:22of this approach and I said, well,
44:25I think about it at 4 levels.
44:27You know the first is that you
44:29know it was based on that research
44:31that I mentioned to you earlier.
44:33You know from from psychology and
44:35from neuroscience is from and the
44:37qualitative research that I mentioned
44:39you know is based on research about
44:41how people can develop and change
44:43and that was not research on GGV.
44:45He was just research on on
44:47people's developmental processes
44:47and learning processes. They say.
44:49But then the second level is
44:52we started to gather.
44:53You know, anecdotal stories.
44:55You know,
44:55we started to hear from people
44:57who have gone through the class
44:59and then had actually acted in
45:01this way and attributed it to
45:03the experiences that they had.
45:05And then we see the third level as
45:07we started to have some educators
45:09who would do pre and post kinds
45:12of surveys and they would look
45:14at the impacts of that.
45:16That's done most often in
45:17the field of accounting.
45:19There's some new papers that are coming
45:21out where they shows no significant
45:23differences in the way students respond.
45:25After going through the giving
45:27voice to values or the not giving
45:29those values and then the fourth
45:31level would be kind of the Holy
45:33Grail of this kind of research.
45:34And as I said,
45:35I'm not a social scientist,
45:37so I actually teamed up with a social
45:39scientist at Yale and we were trying to
45:42do some research where we would look at,
45:44you know, people who had had this
45:46experience and people who had not
45:48and then maybe two years later there
45:50was an ethical issue and and did they
45:52respond more appropriately or not.
45:54And frankly we couldn't design a
45:56study that work because it was just
45:58too much noise in the system obvious.
46:00Lee, you know you can't do it.
46:02You could find correlative connections,
46:04but you couldn't find causal connections.
46:06I don't know how you would design that study.
46:08I'm hoping there's some social
46:10scientists out there who can,
46:11but what the from the experience
46:13we were having,
46:14both with the folks who were doing
46:16the sort of pre and post studies with
46:18students and then also the experiences
46:20we were having in companies or companies
46:22were saying to us people are raising
46:25issues more often or sometimes when
46:27people will raise an issue they may
46:29still go to their ethics officer.
46:31And report,
46:31but rather than being a report
46:33for investigation purposes,
46:34they bring the issue to say look,
46:36I think there's something going on here.
46:38I want to address it.
46:39Will you work with me to create an
46:42effective strategy and scripting
46:43approach so that I can do it?
46:45I had this feedback from Lockheed Martin,
46:47the defense contractor and that
46:49you know from their point of view,
46:51that helps him feel like there's
46:52more true culture change because
46:54people were taking ownership for
46:55trying to address the issues.
46:57And then we started.
46:58We created a book series from Rutledge
47:00around giving voice to values,
47:01applying it to different areas.
47:03We have a new book coming out in the fall.
47:06On tactics for combining
47:07for combating racism,
47:08where it's actually examples
47:09of conversations you know,
47:11and the the woman who wrote it,
47:13you know,
47:14you know.
47:15She gives examples of real
47:16conversations and what people said,
47:18and then how you might respond in kind
47:20of talks about what can be effective
47:23and what might be less effective.
47:25And we've had similar as a book that
47:28was written for use in in medical
47:30schools for the medical ethics.
47:32Required courses you know where they
47:34actually introduced the the materials
47:36and the codes and the principles that.
47:38You already teach and need to teach,
47:40but then they also introduce giving
47:43voice to values and they have a set
47:45of like 10 scenarios that residents
47:47young physicians might face and then
47:49begin to try and apply the given West
47:52values methodology to how you might
47:54address them effectively in your workspace.
47:56Similarly,
47:57people in law have done that.
47:59People are applying it.
48:00We've got a book where someone is
48:02trying trying to apply it around
48:05sustainability with another book written
48:07to apply these ideas around young adult.
48:09Development so people sort of
48:11took it beyond the original idea.
48:13I'm going to wrap up and hopefully
48:15we have some
48:16time for some questions,
48:17but I think what you're probably
48:19gathering right now is that giving
48:21with values is really just a reframe.
48:24All it is is asking a different question.
48:26As I said earlier and I like to
48:29tell like to conclude by saying that
48:31GV is based on three reversals,
48:33three flips, or reversals.
48:35We've reversed what it is we're talking
48:37about when we talk about values and ethics.
48:40In organizations or in our wider lives,
48:42we've reversed who it is.
48:43We think we're talking to,
48:45and we've reversed how we
48:47have the conversation.
48:48So in terms of what it is,
48:50we're talking about,
48:51it used to be that I remember we
48:53would proudly proclaim this when
48:54I was at Harvard Business School,
48:56who would say no in our ethics classes.
48:59We don't focus on the so called clear cut,
49:02right? Wrong black and white issues.
49:04We focus on the grey issues because
49:06the clearcut issues are easy.
49:07We want to focus on the complex issues where.
49:10It's not so obvious and I used to think,
49:13yeah, that makes sense,
49:14but I've actually changed my mind on that.
49:17I mean,
49:18of course there are a lot of great issues,
49:21but reasonable people of goodwill
49:22and intelligence can legitimately do
49:24disagree on many of those issues.
49:26That's that's why they're grey.
49:27But nevertheless,
49:28there are a lot of issues where most of us,
49:31not everybody but most of us
49:33would have clicked would agree.
49:35You know, that's clearly over the line.
49:37It's clearly illegal or fraudulent
49:39or abusive. But just because?
49:41Most of us might feel that way.
49:43Doesn't mean that we feel able
49:45capable to be effective in acting.
49:47And So what?
49:48What we've decided to do is to focus more
49:50with the giving voice to values scenarios.
49:53On those more clearcut issues,
49:55because we find that if we focus
49:57on the grey issues we never get
49:59past the discussion about how
50:01many angels dance on the head of
50:03a pin to talk about how you might
50:06actually enact an act on something.
50:08Once you've decided which you
50:09believe is right and so we've.
50:11Try to focus on issues where most
50:13of us would agree mean you know that
50:16that's clearly over the line and it's
50:18interesting because I think if people
50:20get better at talking about that,
50:22it's actually going to make them
50:24better at discussing in dealing
50:26with the grey issues.
50:27I remember talking to a gentleman
50:29who designed a lot of The Who was
50:32responsible for designing the ethics and
50:34leadership programs for the for the US Army,
50:36just like 1.3 million in
50:38listed and civilian employees.
50:39And he was saying to me,
50:41you know,
50:42I've been working in this.
50:44Area for a number of years and it's
50:46so interesting to me that over
50:48the years the number of times that
50:50someone will say an issue is Gray
50:52just gets bigger and bigger and
50:54bigger and you know an when he was
50:56kind of pointing out is it wasn't that
50:58they were necessarily all that complex,
51:01it's just that it became
51:02easier to frame them that way.
51:04If you didn't actually feel like
51:06you had any options, and so that's
51:08part of why we focus on the more.
51:10As I say, clearcut issues see and the 2nd.
51:14Flip is who we think we're talking to.
51:16Now it used to be.
51:17I'd walk into a classroom where I'd
51:19walk into an organization, a company,
51:20and they tell you that most of
51:22the people here are good people.
51:23We just have a few bad apples,
51:25and those are the ones this program is for.
51:27But I actually think in the
51:30audience differently.
51:30This is based on some research by
51:33the late great deeds and Peter
51:35Crampton on ethics and negotiations,
51:37but we think of the organization or
51:40the classroom as a bell curve and
51:42we premise that at one tail end of
51:45the bell curve are the folks who
51:48would self identify as opportunists
51:50and we would define opportunists
51:52as people who would say I will
51:54always try and act in my personal
51:56self interest regardless of values.
51:58Nobody falls into one of these
52:00categories all the time,
52:02but these are people who say that's
52:04my primary motivation and at the
52:06other tail end of the bell curve are
52:08the folks who would say who would
52:10identify self identify as idealists.
52:12These are the people who would
52:14say I would like.
52:15I will always try and after my values,
52:17regardless of the impact on myself
52:19interest what we premises is the
52:21majority of us fall under the belt.
52:23I put myself there,
52:25we call them pragmatists and we define
52:27pragmatists as people who would say.
52:29I would like to act on my values
52:31as long as it doesn't put me
52:34at a systematic disadvantage.
52:35Now that doesn't mean as long
52:36as I know I'll succeed.
52:38It doesn't mean as long as I
52:40know I'll never pay a price.
52:42It simply means I think I have a shot.
52:44I think I have a chance now.
52:46If you define your audience that way,
52:48I don't really think I have the
52:50power to change the opportunists.
52:52I think there will always be with us
52:54and I'm not so worried about the idealists.
52:56Except I would like them to be more skillful.
53:00But we're really focusing on the pragmatists,
53:02and we're saying we want to give
53:04you the skills we want to give
53:06you the literal scripts,
53:08the arguments we want to give you,
53:10the rehearsal practice,
53:11and the peer coaching to be.
53:13And the positive examples to be who
53:15you already want to be at your best.
53:18We're not trying to change,
53:19you were trying to enable.
53:21You were trying to empower you,
53:23and our premise is that if enough
53:25of the pragmatists,
53:26an the idea lists are more likely
53:28to do this and more skillful.
53:30At enacting it,
53:31it changes the water that the
53:33opportunists are swimming in.
53:34So the calculus that they do
53:36to determine what is
53:37in their self interest has to shift
53:40because they can't rely on the same level
53:42of silent complicity from everybody else.
53:44So that's how we've sort of flipped who we
53:47think we're talking to in these classes.
53:50And then, finally, we've.
53:51We've flipped how we have the conversation,
53:53and I've already described that to you
53:56instead of asking what's right, we ask,
53:58how do you get the right thing done,
54:00and we engage you in pre scripting and action
54:03planning and rehearsal and peer coaching.
54:05It's not a role play role plays are,
54:08you know,
54:09traditional role plays an adverse aerial.
54:12I remember when I was still a Columbia,
54:15there was a very he's still.
54:17There was very experienced, very senior,
54:19very respected leadership faculty
54:20member there and he was very committed
54:23to values driven leadership and so he
54:25saw all these stories at the Columbia.
54:27Students were writing an he said
54:29to me he said Mary,
54:31I want to design, you know,
54:33an optional voluntary workshop for the
54:35MBA students where we'll take a few
54:38of those scenarios and will have the
54:40students come in and will have them.
54:42Respond to them and the way he set it up.
54:45This is pre GGV,
54:46so it was part of the influence to me.
54:49But he said the way he set it up is that.
54:52He would share a scenario and he
54:55would invite students in the group
54:57to to voice a values based position
54:59in response to the scenario,
55:01and he played the bad guy right.
55:03The manager who is telling you
55:05to do something illegal,
55:07or whoever the villain in the scenario
55:09was now this particular faculty
55:11member was very sharp, very crisp,
55:13and it's thinking very quick on his
55:15feet and a little bit intimidating.
55:17And so the first scenario or two
55:20student would raise their hand.
55:21You know,
55:22it's like sheep to the slaughter
55:24they would start speaking.
55:26And this professor would just
55:27shoot them down.
55:28You know very easily and very quickly and so
55:30very quickly nobody would volunteer anymore,
55:33you know.
55:33And so it ended up being a reinforcement
55:36about how impossible it is to do this.
55:39And So what we've decided is that
55:40it's not that adversarial role.
55:42Plays can't be a good way to
55:44sharpen your skills.
55:45They certainly can,
55:46but you need to think about
55:48this in the developmental way,
55:50and we need to actually give
55:52people the opportunity to all be
55:54on the same side trying to build.
55:56An effective script and then they
55:57get to pick an action plan and they
56:00get to peer coach on it and they
56:02get to point out what doesn't work.
56:03You know they get to point out what.
56:06What is less effective,
56:07but only if they are engaged in
56:09being part of the group to try
56:11and enhance it to try and make it
56:13better so they work as a group to
56:15try and come up with the most.
56:18Skillful scripts and action
56:19plans for enacting values.
56:20Then, of course,
56:21you could still move on to an adverse
56:24aerial role play if you want to.
56:26After people have built up this muscle,
56:29but if you start there,
56:30it was actually reinforcing the sense
56:32that it was impossible to do this.
56:35And so that's, and that's why we do that,
56:37so that's kind of GV in a nutshell.
56:40There's many stories I can share with
56:42you about using it in different contexts
56:45or in different regions of the world.
56:47Different people's responses.
56:48But I'm going to stop there,
56:50as you can see,
56:51most of my examples came from business
56:52because that's where I've been working.
56:54But I'm really curious to learn from you all,
56:57whether you see implications
56:58in the work that you do,
56:59and I really appreciate the opportunity
57:01to share this with you today.
57:02Thank you.
57:06Thank you Mary.
57:07That was really terrific.
57:08I mean, I certainly in hearing
57:10you speak about this today.
57:12Could imagine many applications within
57:14our own department as we try to take
57:17on great some work and being more of
57:19an anti racism culture for example.
57:21But let me see if there are any
57:24questions from the audience.
57:25You can either put them in the chat
57:28and I can share them with Mary.
57:44Well Mary, I have one question for you.
57:47You mentioned that that in this book
57:49series that you're you're you're
57:51editing this series, is that right?
57:53Yeah, you have a series on how to deal
57:56with racism in the workplace and and who's
57:59writing that that particular book? Yeah,
58:01I'm very fortunate it's being written
58:03by a woman named Shannon Prince.
58:06She's a Harvard trained lawyer,
58:08but I met her because I teach
58:10in a program called fast Fee,
58:13which is stands for a fellowship at Ash.
58:16Fits for the study of professional
58:18ethics and what this program does is
58:21we bring together new new physicians,
58:24recent graduates from Med school,
58:26new lawyers, new journalists,
58:27new business MBA students,
58:29new seminarians, multi denominational,
58:31and we're about to add engineering.
58:33I think in architecture,
58:34but we bring together
58:36these young professionals.
58:38It's a competitive fellowship application
58:40and they spend a couple weeks and we
58:44we visit historical sites in Berlin
58:46and Anushree engine and assets and
58:49we look at what people in their
58:52profession did for good and ill during
58:55World War Two during the Nazi period.
58:58And then we look at contemporary
59:01ethical challenges in their profession
59:03and try and understand what can
59:06we learn from these experiences.
59:08And Shannon was in the long group
59:11I taught in the business group,
59:13so she wasn't in my classes.
59:15But I met her through that.
59:17She's a very,
59:18very thoughtful person,
59:19and what I love about the way Shannon
59:22talks when she talks about these issues.
59:25And I think it's a very useful tool for
59:28talking about any kind of identity conflicts,
59:30is that she's really.
59:32She uses stories.
59:33She uses stories to illustrate examples,
59:35and she draws on history,
59:37and she also tends to be.
59:40Very economical and her expression
59:42so even though she's telling
59:43a really compelling story,
59:45she does it very economically.
59:47An I I'm I'm looking forward to to
59:50the book coming out in the fall.
59:53That's great.
59:54In fact,
59:54one person in the
59:56audience mentioned that he that
59:57he thought it would be helpful for
60:00us to build up muscle memory in
01:00:02responding to microaggressions.
01:00:04So absolutely in fact, I can tell you when
01:00:07I was when I was still at
01:00:09Harvard Business School,
01:00:10I proposed that we would create.
01:00:12I created and taught the first
01:00:14course on managing diversity,
01:00:16which is what we called it in
01:00:18those days managing diversity.
01:00:20Now that's.
01:00:23But I remember the reason I wanted
01:00:25to develop that course was because
01:00:27I didn't have that muscle memory.
01:00:29It, you know, I was a kind of person where I
01:00:32would observe what I thought were injustices,
01:00:35or you know, in equity. And but I,
01:00:37I'm sort of an introvert and you know,
01:00:40I I was a little bit risk averse.
01:00:43I didn't really enjoy arguments,
01:00:44so I thought I'm not really
01:00:46equipped to intervene.
01:00:47So I'm doomed to see these things and
01:00:50then be a bystander passive bystander.
01:00:52And I wanted to change that.
01:00:54So I thought.
01:00:54Well, maybe you know the best way
01:00:56to learn something is to teach it.
01:00:58As you all know.
01:00:58So I thought maybe if I you know study
01:01:00this and gather examples and write cases
01:01:02and develop a course and teach the course,
01:01:04I'll get better at this.
01:01:05So I did.
01:01:06It took two years to develop this course,
01:01:08get it approved and run it.
01:01:09The course was very successful,
01:01:10the students loved it.
01:01:13And at the end of the course
01:01:15I felt good about that,
01:01:17but I remember actually being near
01:01:19tears because I felt you know,
01:01:21but I haven't addressed my need.
01:01:23You know, I'm still the same person.
01:01:26I still I'm not likely to do this.
01:01:29And yet in the two to six months
01:01:31after I finished teaching the course,
01:01:34I had several compelling experiences
01:01:35for me where I was in situations
01:01:38where there were real sort of
01:01:40discrimina Tori experiences.
01:01:41And I found myself.
01:01:43Speaking and speaking effectively
01:01:44and not in a way that like
01:01:46you're being racist or you know,
01:01:48but really sometimes they
01:01:49used a little gentle humor.
01:01:51Sometimes it was asking questions,
01:01:53but whatever it was and I found myself
01:01:55addressing the issues effectively and
01:01:57it's not that I do this all the time.
01:01:59It's not that I'm perfect at it,
01:02:01but I just realized I would
01:02:03never have done that at all.
01:02:05And what I realized was I was rehearsing,
01:02:07you know,
01:02:08even unconsciously I was pre
01:02:10scripting and rehearsing by
01:02:11gathering all these stories that I,
01:02:13you know, shared in the class.
01:02:15And so for me that was pre GV.
01:02:17But that was one of the inputs into
01:02:20developing giving voice to values which
01:02:22actually came from a diversity context,
01:02:25although that wasn't.
01:02:26You know how I ended up producing.
01:02:30Great,
01:02:30that's a good example.
01:02:32Are there other dilemmas or
01:02:33issues that you could give us?
01:02:36Another example of that
01:02:37you think think might?
01:02:39Fit with you know.
01:02:41Sure, even a medical care
01:02:42setting or that sort of thing.
01:02:45Yeah, so the example it was going to
01:02:48give was not a medical care setting,
01:02:50but it was a diversity related example,
01:02:53right? And I think that it probably would
01:02:56transfer because medical settings are also,
01:02:58you know class structures just like a
01:03:01corporate organization is kind of a
01:03:03class structure and so the example that
01:03:06was going to give is of a woman who was
01:03:08a with a consultant and and someone who
01:03:11studied issues of identity and diversity
01:03:13and inclusion and all those kinds of issues.
01:03:16And she got hired to do a consulting
01:03:19project with one of the major financial
01:03:21institutions in New York and they
01:03:24were concerned because, you know,
01:03:26basically their senior leadership with
01:03:28all white male an so they wanted her to
01:03:31do a series of interviews and kind of a
01:03:34study to identify where the challenges
01:03:37were in to give them some recommendations.
01:03:39And so she she was quite
01:03:41knowledgeable about the field.
01:03:43But she also like me.
01:03:45She was also not a really.
01:03:47She she was an introvert and she
01:03:49didn't really want to get into
01:03:51arguments with people.
01:03:52But she was very concerned and committed
01:03:55and so she was doing these interviews
01:03:57and so one of the interviews she did
01:04:00was was with one of the most senior
01:04:02managing director's at this firm.
01:04:04And she walked into his office,
01:04:06and you know she fell right away.
01:04:08This was not going to go well because
01:04:10he was sitting in his office and
01:04:12he had his arms crossed and he was
01:04:14kind of looking irritated.
01:04:15And you know,
01:04:16it's a transactional environment.
01:04:17Time is money and this seemed
01:04:18to him like a waste of time.
01:04:20And so she started asking him some questions.
01:04:22That kind of.
01:04:23You know,
01:04:24set the scene and when she got to
01:04:27the question about you know how much
01:04:29diversity is there in your team.
01:04:31The folks that you hire,
01:04:32he just got irritated and he just
01:04:34sort of kind of put his hands out
01:04:37and he said excuse me.
01:04:38But he said this is ********.
01:04:42I said, well, what do you mean?
01:04:44And he said, well,
01:04:45you know I was the first person.
01:04:47The only person in this organization
01:04:49to hire an African American male as
01:04:51a senior senior professional in my
01:04:53team a couple of years ago and he
01:04:55didn't workout and I had to let him go.
01:04:58And I've been paying a price ever since.
01:05:00And then the company comes to me
01:05:02and starts talking about diversity.
01:05:03And, you know,
01:05:04they're being hypocritical here,
01:05:05and you know, he was just really worked out.
01:05:08So she told me that she was like
01:05:10she knew all the arguments.
01:05:12Intellectually,
01:05:12you know like if you hired a white
01:05:14male and they didn't work out,
01:05:16we do never hire another white male,
01:05:18you know, and she knew.
01:05:19Did this gentleman really get the the
01:05:21same support that everyone else did?
01:05:22She knew the things to ask,
01:05:24but she could tell that if she
01:05:26asked them to
01:05:27this guy he was just going to get
01:05:29more and more you know blocked off,
01:05:31you know he was on the offensive and he
01:05:33wasn't going to take that in and so she
01:05:35said she was trying to figure out how
01:05:37to move forward in the conversation and
01:05:39she said that what she came up with,
01:05:41partly just by time.
01:05:43But it was also sincere,
01:05:44and so she said she just kind
01:05:46of stayed calm and said So what
01:05:48price did you pay, you know?
01:05:50And she really wanted to know because
01:05:52he said he'd pay this price ever since,
01:05:54and she said it was remarkable.
01:05:56He just kind of sat back in his
01:05:58chair and his face kind of calm down
01:06:01and then he sort of sort of kaktus.
01:06:03And he said, you know,
01:06:04I've been telling that story for
01:06:06two years and no one has ever asked
01:06:08me before what price I paid.
01:06:10Everyone just assumed before she
01:06:11paid a price. You know, an.
01:06:13And he said, and you know what,
01:06:15now that you ask me?
01:06:17I don't think I paid a price,
01:06:19he said, but I really thought I did.
01:06:21And so it was that broke it for him.
01:06:24You know?
01:06:24And then they were able to actually
01:06:26have a more constructive conversation.
01:06:28But well, why does it feel uncomfortable?
01:06:30And why did you feel that way?
01:06:32And you know what might be changed?
01:06:34And but you know it was this this
01:06:37idea that she could read from him.
01:06:39That pushing was going to make him push back.
01:06:41And she also played to her own strengths.
01:06:44She was not very good.
01:06:45At debate,
01:06:46but what she was good at was probing
01:06:48and questioning and listening,
01:06:49and so she played to her strengths
01:06:51as one of the pillars of giving
01:06:53voice to values of self knowledge and
01:06:55alignment that anyone can do this.
01:06:57But you're going to do it differently
01:06:59if you're an introvert or an extrovert
01:07:01or risk taker or risk averse.
01:07:03Or you know if you like to communicate
01:07:05in writing or in verbally or in
01:07:07groups or one on one.
01:07:09So she played to her strengths
01:07:10and it broke the conversation.
01:07:12Ended being much more conversation.
01:07:13Constructive engagement.
01:07:14So I was like to think of that example
01:07:17when I'm in those kinds of situations.
01:07:23Thank you. Uhm? I guess I
01:07:27could say in a medical context,
01:07:29one of the things I hear alot.
01:07:32I've spoken at hospitals and Mayo
01:07:34Clinic and Kaiser Permanente's
01:07:35bioethics seminar in places like
01:07:37that where it's all positions.
01:07:39I'm also part of the Aspen Ethical
01:07:41leadership in healthcare program
01:07:43where we have physicians and chief
01:07:45medical officers and nurses an alot
01:07:47alot of what I hear in those contexts
01:07:49has to do with what I was calling.
01:07:52A class system has to do with the fact of.
01:07:56You know it's it's.
01:07:57It's like in a corporate setting.
01:07:59It's like in an academic setting,
01:08:02it can be difficult for people who are
01:08:04sometimes the closest to the patients
01:08:06to be able to communicate things and be
01:08:09heard by folks who have greater expertise.
01:08:12But maybe because they
01:08:13have greater expertise,
01:08:14I'm not spending as much time with
01:08:16the individuals and so finding
01:08:18ways to raise that information
01:08:19rather than to become discouraged,
01:08:22disillusioned, cynical.
01:08:24Can be again a matter of
01:08:26rehearsal and practice.
01:08:27I remember speaking at a hospital
01:08:29in Australia and like almost
01:08:31a year later getting an email
01:08:33from a young resident who said,
01:08:35you know,
01:08:36I'm I'm working now and you
01:08:38know I knew about what you did
01:08:40with GBB here and she said,
01:08:43you know we're just not being
01:08:45listened to and we're having trouble
01:08:47figuring out how to to get our
01:08:49ideas out there and we want to be
01:08:52constructive about it and so you know.
01:08:54We engaged in some conversation.
01:08:56I didn't solve her problem,
01:08:57but just sort of gave her some
01:08:59ways to think about framing it.
01:09:00And she wrote back to me later and said,
01:09:03you know,
01:09:03we use those strategies we were
01:09:04able to create a kind of network
01:09:06that where we can come together and
01:09:08share the challenges we're facing
01:09:09in and also share them with people
01:09:11who want to hear about them and
01:09:13then figure out how to express them
01:09:15in a way that they can get hurt.
01:09:17So I think it can be very useful
01:09:18in a health care setting.
01:09:21Sounds very useful, go ahead.
01:09:25Follow up question.
01:09:26Doctor Gentili thanks so much for this
01:09:28really terrific presentation and approach.
01:09:30You said you didn't worry so much about
01:09:33the idealists and and I wondered how
01:09:35the ideal is due in terms of developing
01:09:38action plans for for moving an issue
01:09:41forward and whether there's so.
01:09:42I guess that's that's my
01:09:44question in terms of the yeah,
01:09:46compared to the pragmatist,
01:09:48yeah, that's a great question
01:09:49and you kind of caught me there.
01:09:52You know, I usually say I don't
01:09:54worry so much about the idea list,
01:09:57but I want them to be more skillful.
01:10:00More confident, but I'm actually
01:10:01a little worried about that.
01:10:03I remember giving giving this talk once
01:10:05and there was a woman in the back of
01:10:07the room and and as soon as I finished
01:10:10and they opened up for questions,
01:10:11her hand shot up and she said
01:10:13I called on her and she said,
01:10:15well, I think this is all stupid.
01:10:18OK, can you say a little more and she said,
01:10:21well I don't need giving voice to values,
01:10:24I always voice my values and then she
01:10:26paused and she said no one ever listens.
01:10:28But I always voice my values and so
01:10:31you know that's kind of the thing
01:10:33with ideal is is that if we what I
01:10:35usually would say to people if if
01:10:37what you're invested in is being
01:10:39righteous then you don't need GD.
01:10:41But if you actually want to make an
01:10:43impact then I think this can be very
01:10:45useful to you and this can actually
01:10:48be something that will enable you.
01:10:50To feel better about your righteousness in,
01:10:52you know,
01:10:52because you'll be figuring out
01:10:54ways to express it.
01:10:55You know, so you kind of caught me with that.
01:10:58I mean, I do worry about the idea list,
01:11:01but it's it's in a different way.
01:11:05Thank you and I do think that
01:11:07actually once once they are in these
01:11:09conversations and doing that kind
01:11:10of scripting and skill building,
01:11:12it actually enables them to see other
01:11:15perspectives more because we have a protocol.
01:11:17We work people through and one of the
01:11:19parts of that protocol is we ask them
01:11:22to consider what's at stake or what's
01:11:24at risk for all the affected parties,
01:11:26and we're doing that not to do a stakeholder
01:11:29analysis because they said already.
01:11:31This is post decision making,
01:11:32but rather to understand what
01:11:34price might I really pay.
01:11:36If I went along with what
01:11:37you're asking me to do,
01:11:39and is there some way that you
01:11:41can mitigate that cost to me,
01:11:42or at least acknowledge what
01:11:44you're asking me to do,
01:11:45so that instead of my being the villain,
01:11:48I'm actually having this opportunity
01:11:49to step up and make even what
01:11:51might feel like a sacrifice,
01:11:52but in the service of something
01:11:54that we both share and is
01:11:56the skill building then part
01:11:57of the seven pillars is that?
01:11:59Is that where the skill building comes in?
01:12:02Yeah, the seven pillars are briefly it's
01:12:04it's it's values and we have a discussion
01:12:06of how we define values, its its choice.
01:12:08We have a whole set of exercises to
01:12:10help people identify that they have
01:12:12more choices and they think it's
01:12:14purpose because there are ways you
01:12:16can use your own purpose and the
01:12:19purpose of others to enable you it's.
01:12:21I get their their self
01:12:23knowledge and alignment,
01:12:24which I already explained and then we
01:12:26get to voice which is about there's
01:12:28many different ways to voice and we
01:12:30talk about the different strategies.
01:12:32They're not all just speaking,
01:12:34and then there's reasons and
01:12:35rationalizations, which is,
01:12:36we've identified some of the most commonly
01:12:38heard objections that people face,
01:12:40and we've begun to unpack how you
01:12:42can reframe them or respond to them,
01:12:44and so going through those steps becomes a
01:12:46kind of practice and scripting rehearsal.
01:12:50Thank you, yeah, thank
01:12:51you, that's great question.
01:12:52Glad you caught me on that.
01:12:58Well, I think we're just about at
01:13:00the end of the session right now.
01:13:02I want to thank you.
01:13:04I think you've given us a lot to
01:13:06think about, and I think there
01:13:08are some ways we might consider
01:13:10applying them to our own work.
01:13:11I heard many things in what you said.
01:13:14I even this
01:13:15idea of the the.
01:13:17You know the people who are in the
01:13:20business classes thinking they're
01:13:22going to wait till they are the CEO
01:13:25to to do things you know we have
01:13:27many trainees in our department and
01:13:29and who have a perspective that
01:13:32about things and and as well as
01:13:34people all over along the continuum.
01:13:36So anyway, thank you so much.
01:13:39Thank you for being here today
01:13:41and my pleasure and can I
01:13:43just say that if anyone wants
01:13:45to hear more about it you can.
01:13:48Email me, I will tell people
01:13:49whether they like it or not.
01:13:50Once they heard me speak about this,
01:13:52you're in my life forever,
01:13:53so feel free to email it at
01:13:55garden and also you can just go
01:13:56to giving voice to values.org if
01:13:58you want to read more about it.
01:14:01Thank you thank you bye bye.